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Simple explanation. People are much like water, they will always take the path of least resistance when forced with any obstacle. This doesn't mean that making the path easier for gamers rewards them with more memorable game play though. Just because that's what people do, does not necessarily mean that's what people want.

I'm even at fault with this. Given the option to group when leveling up a character in any modern MMO, I usually will just solo 100% of the time anyways. Becuase it is just fster to do it by myself, rather than waiting on a group mate 24/7. But on the flip side, my most memorable and fun experinces in MMO's were in EQ1, DAOC, & AC. Where you HAD to group, you could solo in those games, but you were just hamstringing yourself by doing so.

Yet my most enjoyable memories of MMO gaming are always from Raiding & that forced group content from earlier games. When I actually felt challeneged, when leveling actually meant something monumental, and when beating that raid boss we had been working on for almost 2 months finally happened.

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I've found a lot of people who say MMOs are too "easy" are 10+ year veterans who, after this amout of time, should damn well be quite skilled at playing them.

If it is still "hard" after 10 years, you're doing it wrong...

Even 10+ year vets can find something hard. Have a look at DREAM Paragon, the number 1 WoW guild in the world. A month into the new raid tier and they still haven't cleared all 13 heroic bosses. Keep in mind these are the best raiders in the world, with the best gear, are sponsored, and raid 40+ hours a week.

All games, GW2, WoW, etc, have easy content, and hard content.

I'm sorry, maybe it's just me, but that sounds utterly pathetic. What a bunch of losers.

This is one time I agree with Cephus404. That is just sad.

Be that as it may, this is specifiaclly the reason why no MMO has been able to touch WoW. It has high qualtiy/ample content for every type of player. Want to log in for 30 min a day and plow through the lastest teir? LFR is available. Want to dedicate your life to it, beat your head against the wall, wipe 600 times before killing a boss, get the best gear the game has to offer, and show up on world ranking lists? Run the latest heroic tier. The sooner other MMOs companies actually copy WoW (not just get labled as such), the sooner WoW will be dethroned.

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When developers start making HARD difficulties actually hard I will go back to playing them on the hardest settings. Most games these days HARD = they have more health, you have less, you have less ammo/mana/whatever.

I remember playing SOCOM4 on the hardest setting and the only difference from normal was you would die in 2 hits and enemies would die in 20 hits, so boring it's unreal.

Dark Souls is considered by many to be a hard game but people I know that usually only play shooters online and other blockbuster games have slogged through it to completion because it only offers one difficulty, the game is as difficult as the game is, there is no making it harder or easier other than the way you decide to approach it. I'd be happy if more games had one difficulty and that was it, take it or leave it. People will end up playing the game for longer rather than powering through it in 8 hours and never touching it again.

Also I don't want to have to complete the game 3 times to unlock whatever hard more you have hidden away, gating difficult content and creating a meaningless grind it stupid.

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First define what is "hard", sure a programmer can tweak your ammo, mana, or whatever and make the game "hard" but is that what drives a great game? Of course not, that's just a tool, in the end you want something that challenges your mind and skill to the maximum, on every level, so your definition of hard may simply mean a hard grind. Which in the end can you blame someone for skipping it by selecting an easier mode? Some of my most memorable moments come from WoW where we needed weeks to master one encoutner, where everything had to be just right, where we had some server competition. In essensce you need to move the human spirit while tuning difficulty to achieve a sense of accomplishment.

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Yestersday when this topic was created, I gave a few of my ideas about the topic.

Anyway, I know you have all seen it, but to break up the monatany of the thread I thought you guys would like to see what Francis has to say about games being to HARD. Although it's all a show, the guy does look like he is going to explode! lmao

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

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Originally posted by SlickShoes

When developers start making HARD difficulties actually hard I will go back to playing them on the hardest settings. Most games these days HARD = they have more health, you have less, you have less ammo/mana/whatever.

I remember playing SOCOM4 on the hardest setting and the only difference from normal was you would die in 2 hits and enemies would die in 20 hits, so boring it's unreal.

Dark Souls is considered by many to be a hard game but people I know that usually only play shooters online and other blockbuster games have slogged through it to completion because it only offers one difficulty, the game is as difficult as the game is, there is no making it harder or easier other than the way you decide to approach it. I'd be happy if more games had one difficulty and that was it, take it or leave it. People will end up playing the game for longer rather than powering through it in 8 hours and never touching it again.

Also I don't want to have to complete the game 3 times to unlock whatever hard more you have hidden away, gating difficult content and creating a meaningless grind it stupid.

Agree completely, no reason to play games on hard mode if the only real difference is they power up the enemy while decreasing your strength to the point of making it frustrating, but not really more challenging.

Now,if in hard mode enemy AI behaved significantly differently then it might make sense, but otherwise never saw any reason to play titles on anything but "Normal" mode. (which should be challenging enough)

In my day MMORPG's were so hard we fought our way through dungeons in the snow, uphill both ways."I don't have one life, I have many lives" - GruntyStill currently "subscribed" to EVE, and only EVE!!!"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon

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I think what "those" people want is hardcore content for everything. I mean raids only compose a small portion of the game.

It is a common complaint. Those old time gamer start a game and even the critter is hard. And in the wow era, you have to do many of the "easy" content first to get to the hard conent.

Another myth is very small percent of wow players even raid right?

This isn't rerally true, I'll use TOR as an example as it's a common game used to support the theme here. From just about the start of the game, there are areas designed for group play that are filled with elite (hard) mobs. Journey into those zones and you'll see no one there, even at launch it was pretty much like that. AOC would be another good example as each dungeon has an elite mode, how many actually do(did) those on a normal basis though?

For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson

It is a sign of a defeated man, to attack at ones character in the face of logic and reason- Me

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Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by SlickShoes

When developers start making HARD difficulties actually hard I will go back to playing them on the hardest settings. Most games these days HARD = they have more health, you have less, you have less ammo/mana/whatever.

I remember playing SOCOM4 on the hardest setting and the only difference from normal was you would die in 2 hits and enemies would die in 20 hits, so boring it's unreal.

Dark Souls is considered by many to be a hard game but people I know that usually only play shooters online and other blockbuster games have slogged through it to completion because it only offers one difficulty, the game is as difficult as the game is, there is no making it harder or easier other than the way you decide to approach it. I'd be happy if more games had one difficulty and that was it, take it or leave it. People will end up playing the game for longer rather than powering through it in 8 hours and never touching it again.

Also I don't want to have to complete the game 3 times to unlock whatever hard more you have hidden away, gating difficult content and creating a meaningless grind it stupid.

Agree completely, no reason to play games on hard mode if the only real difference is they power up the enemy while decreasing your strength to the point of making it frustrating, but not really more challenging.

Now,if in hard mode enemy AI behaved significantly differently then it might make sense, but otherwise never saw any reason to play titles on anything but "Normal" mode. (which should be challenging enough)

In many cases this is how it's done though, as it's not just "buffed" up mobs, the NPC's use different skills, as well as more CC, healing, etc...

For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson

It is a sign of a defeated man, to attack at ones character in the face of logic and reason- Me

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I've found a lot of people who say MMOs are too "easy" are 10+ year veterans who, after this amout of time, should damn well be quite skilled at playing them.

If it is still "hard" after 10 years, you're doing it wrong...

You make a good point and I sadly fall into this group. After 16 years or so playing MMO's, even longer playing games in general on top of being an active member in many gaming communities and even working with a few developers over the years... I know to much. I say I know to much because most games hold very little mystery for me anymore. I know what the thought process was when the content and mechanics were designed. I know how to disect games and their mechanics.

I'm the type that likes to solo mostly now days or stick with small groups not because I'm anti social, but because I like to try and solo group content. I've actually managed to solo a good bit of group content in most games, some requiring a good bit of effort, while others not so much. On content I can't solo I try to do it with as few people as possible. I've taken myself and 2 others and completed content designed for 5 and some times 10 people.

And no, when I say a game or content is to easy I'm not attempting to laud it over anyone. I'm not attempting to proclaim myself superior lol. I ,like everyone else, want to be entertained and challenge for me is entertaining. I can only seek out so much challenge myself though. The developers have to meet me half way for a truly entertaining experience.

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Originally posted by SlickShoes

When developers start making HARD difficulties actually hard I will go back to playing them on the hardest settings. Most games these days HARD = they have more health, you have less, you have less ammo/mana/whatever.

I remember playing SOCOM4 on the hardest setting and the only difference from normal was you would die in 2 hits and enemies would die in 20 hits, so boring it's unreal.

Dark Souls is considered by many to be a hard game but people I know that usually only play shooters online and other blockbuster games have slogged through it to completion because it only offers one difficulty, the game is as difficult as the game is, there is no making it harder or easier other than the way you decide to approach it. I'd be happy if more games had one difficulty and that was it, take it or leave it. People will end up playing the game for longer rather than powering through it in 8 hours and never touching it again.

Also I don't want to have to complete the game 3 times to unlock whatever hard more you have hidden away, gating difficult content and creating a meaningless grind it stupid.

But even in Dark Souls, as in many other RPGs including MMOs, you can always outlevel the content if it feels too hard for you. You can simply grind until its easy. In some MMOs, you can do not only that, but bring more friends to make the content easier. So in the end, it is more or less how hard you want it to be.

I also remember Ninja Gaiden: Black was pretty hard. But, I also remember finding an exploit which I used to make infinite amount of money, which I then used to buy everything there was to buy within the game, in turn making the game a wee bit easier.

I guess my point is, the game is hard if you have to learn and improve in order to succeed. In games like Dark Souls and Ninja Gaiden, you have to beat the next boss in order to advance. Its a skill check. You fail - you try again. And you try again, and again until you beat it. Its not about the amount you have to grind, not about the death penalty but the mastery you need to acquire in order to finish the game.

Doing something arduous for 12 hours straight or spending and hour to recouperate every time you fail is not "hard" - its just masochism.

And you shouldn't be smug about playing a game with poor UI, poor documentation and poor tutorial either, because that is the wrong kind of "hard" - the kind developers should avoid. Its just plain bad design. Ask any developer.

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky

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Originally posted by DavisFlightWoW is called easy because all of its hand holding mechanics and nonexistant risk vs reward. The hardest (most gimmicky) raid in WoW is still easier than almost all raids in DAOC.

If the hardest raid cannot be beaten by the best raiders (paragon) for a long time, there is no point making it even harder. If only 0.0001% of the players can beat the content, there is no reason to make it even harder so 0.00000001% of the players can enjoy it.

To 99% of the players, DAOC and hard mode WOW raids are too hard .. and there is little difference between them.

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Originally posted by Kyleran

Agree completely, no reason to play games on hard mode if the only real difference is they power up the enemy while decreasing your strength to the point of making it frustrating, but not really more challenging.

Now,if in hard mode enemy AI behaved significantly differently then it might make sense, but otherwise never saw any reason to play titles on anything but "Normal" mode. (which should be challenging enough)

Finding excuses not to play challenging content?

Of course there is a real difference. If i can take 1000 hits of a special ability of a mob before i die, i will ignore that ability and stand there and face tank it.

If now that ability can 3-shot me, i will pay attention, and try to dodge it, avoid it, or whatever. Numbers matter.

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I've found a lot of people who say MMOs are too "easy" are 10+ year veterans who, after this amout of time, should damn well be quite skilled at playing them.

If it is still "hard" after 10 years, you're doing it wrong...

There is very little accumulated "mmo skill" that would make fighting mobs easier, and it's nothing a brand new player couldn't figure out immediately if they bother to read and understand the skills they are using. Hell, I don't even bust out a spreadsheet and do the math on builds like some do, because there's no reason to. These games are easier.

Look at a planet like Dathomir in Star Wars Galaxies as an example of harder, more challenging gameplay. Not only was there a good mix of easy-medium-hard mobs, there were also very hard mobs and elites mixed in all over the map that meant it was much better to group if you want to stay alive. In addition there was a good chance you or someone in your group would screw up and chain pull too many mobs and get your whole group wiped. This isn't an instance mind you, it was the open world.

My frends and I went to Dathomir because it was difficult to survive, even in a group, if you weren't being very cautious. I realize that not all game zones should be like this, but today's games give you an over-powered "hero" character for your current level/zone and really the only reason you die is because you get lazy about how you approach areas. The lazyiness likely comes from the fact that the games are so simple they don't even demand your full attention to do well. A lot of people are watching TV or movies while they play to keep themselves awake.

A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.

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Originally posted by MindTrigger

There is very little accumulated "mmo skill" that would make fighting mobs easier, and it's nothing a brand new player couldn't figure out immediately if they bother to read and understand the skills they are using. Hell, I don't even bust out a spreadsheet and do the math on builds like some do, because there's no reason to. These games are easier.

Really? Show me a brand new max-level player who can raid hard mode effectively.

The point of the article is not that there is no easy content in MMO, it is that there is difficult content, and people ignoring the challenges when they are complaining about games being "too easy".

Of course it is easy if you don't even try the challenging content. Go do all the challenging content ... if that is still too easy, come back .. and may be then you have some credibility to rant.

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Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by MindTrigger

There is very little accumulated "mmo skill" that would make fighting mobs easier, and it's nothing a brand new player couldn't figure out immediately if they bother to read and understand the skills they are using. Hell, I don't even bust out a spreadsheet and do the math on builds like some do, because there's no reason to. These games are easier.

Really? Show me a brand new max-level player who can raid hard mode effectively.

The point of the article is not that there is no easy content in MMO, it is that there is difficult content, and people ignoring the challenges when they are complaining about games being "too easy".

Of course it is easy if you don't even try the challenging content. Go do all the challenging content ... if that is still too easy, come back .. and may be then you have some credibility to rant.

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Originally posted by DavisFlightWoW is called easy because all of its hand holding mechanics and nonexistant risk vs reward. The hardest (most gimmicky) raid in WoW is still easier than almost all raids in DAOC.

So you've beaten all the hardest raids in WoW, right? You haven't? That's the point of the OP's post. People are way too fond of calling something easy even though they're not capable of doing it or have never tried.

Pshh... I could do that too if I felt like it. NBD.

You can take any supposedly difficult activity and whittle it down to a set of basic instructions—a simple flowchart to follow for success. As if you could look at one diagram or read one paragraph and be on par with the best players in the world. But for most games, there's more to it than the simplest case. And not having the depth of knowledge to make fast decisions as things deviate from the simplest case ensures that you won't ever do as well as a veteran.

Now, there actually are games—even games that many people consider "hard"—that you really can boil down to a simple set of instructions. Counting cards in blackjack is commonly perceived to require a high level of intelligence but is actually rather straightforward. Most people have a lot of difficulty solving a Rubik's Cube but it really can be done in just a few minutes by following simple instructions.

Are there any MMOs which are similarly simple? Where you could give a novice a 5-minute rundown and then stand back as he completes the hardest content in the game? You know, there might be. But only the people who have run that content have the right to judge it like that. Why would we listen to someone complain about the ease of a game that they've never even come close to finishing, or perhaps never even played?

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"So the next time you find yourself typing "too easy" in a comment box, maybe you should consider whether you've actually tried the hard stuff before you click the post button."

This is so true. Many other examples. WOW's famous Sunwell is done only by 2%. Even when LFR first came out, the "normal" mode is done only by 4% where LFR is done by a whopping 35% of the players.

Exactly, this is the issue with every single post about GW2.

Its too easy.

Ask them to post a video of them playing a bunker elementalist or lvl 100+ fractals, perhaps a video of them in a group where they can actually heal/tank an instance in a group without anyone dieing instead of rez zerging it.

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I've found a lot of people who say MMOs are too "easy" are 10+ year veterans who, after this amout of time, should damn well be quite skilled at playing them.

If it is still "hard" after 10 years, you're doing it wrong...

You make a good point and I sadly fall into this group. After 16 years or so playing MMO's, even longer playing games in general on top of being an active member in many gaming communities and even working with a few developers over the years... I know to much. I say I know to much because most games hold very little mystery for me anymore. I know what the thought process was when the content and mechanics were designed. I know how to disect games and their mechanics.

I'm the type that likes to solo mostly now days or stick with small groups not because I'm anti social, but because I like to try and solo group content. I've actually managed to solo a good bit of group content in most games, some requiring a good bit of effort, while others not so much. On content I can't solo I try to do it with as few people as possible. I've taken myself and 2 others and completed content designed for 5 and some times 10 people.

And no, when I say a game or content is to easy I'm not attempting to laud it over anyone. I'm not attempting to proclaim myself superior lol. I ,like everyone else, want to be entertained and challenge for me is entertaining. I can only seek out so much challenge myself though. The developers have to meet me half way for a truly entertaining experience.

You make a great point here, I worked as a QA Tester on GTA:San Andreas and although this is slightly different from just playing games it serves the same purpose. GTA4 is the same game as GTA SA as far as I am concerced, my brain approaches the missions in the same way, I know how the guys constructed the world, I know the level designers and how they created the mission, there is no mystery in a GTA game for me any more. I spent a year of my life playing GTA for a living. I still enjoy playing a GTA game every now and then but they are not challenging in the slightest now.

People don't believe me when I say that GTA is just a copy and paste with a different skin each time and maybe to the normal gamer it doesn't seem like that but I spent a year of my life playing it for about 10 hours a day 7 days a week.

I realise that's not the same as a normal gamer but after years of the same type of games it get's to a similar level, you know how to bypass awkward mechanics, you know the tricks, you know how you want to play, there is no mystery any more.

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"So the next time you find yourself typing "too easy" in a comment box, maybe you should consider whether you've actually tried the hard stuff before you click the post button."

This is so true. Many other examples. WOW's famous Sunwell is done only by 2%. Even when LFR first came out, the "normal" mode is done only by 4% where LFR is done by a whopping 35% of the players.

Exactly, this is the issue with every single post about GW2.

Its too easy.

Ask them to post a video of them playing a bunker elementalist or lvl 100+ fractals, perhaps a video of them in a group where they can actually heal/tank an instance in a group without anyone dieing instead of rez zerging it.

Get a big "huh?" response from them.

laugh and walk away.

I think their confusion is that if "easy" gameplay is available as an option, then the whole game is easy. That is furthest from the truth.

Take D3. Doing inferno with no monster power is now trivial. Any fresh 60 can face tank almost everything and kill everything in seconds.

But the game also has a MP10 hard core perma-death mode. So is the game easy? Now, D3 has little complaint about it being easy because it was way difficult (for inferno) when it first came out.

But in reality, it has very easy, and very difficult content, just like WOW and many other MMOs.